Households With Access To Clean Fuels For Cooking And Associated Factors Towards Achieving Sustainable Development Goals In India: Insights From National Family Health Survey-5 (2019-21)

Background: Cooking using open fires or inefficient stoves fuelled by kerosene, biomass (wood, animal dung and crop waste) and coal generates harmful household air pollution. This study tried to estimate the proportion of Households with primary reliance on clean fuels and technology for cooking in India and determine the factors associated with it using the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 5 data. Materials and methods: We used data from the 2019–2020, National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) household level (IAHR7CFL) data. Clean cooking fuel was considered as household’s who are using electricity, LPG, biogas, natural gas and unclean cooking fuel was considered as any other fuel other than clean fuel. Multivariate logistic regression was performed to estimate the determinants of usage of unclean cooking fuel. Results: Total 6,36,699 households were included in final analysis. The national level proportion of household’s using clean fuel for cooking was 53%. Muslims, Sothern states, households with male Head of the Family (HoF), richest wealth index households, HoF with higher education status were more likely using clean fuels. Whereas Rural households, scheduled tribe households, households with kutcha houses, non-nuclear families and unmarried Hof were more likely using unclean fuels. Conclusions: More than 50 percentage of households do not have access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking. Focus should be on providing access to North Indian states, rural households, households with female as head of the family (HoF), HoF with poor education, non-nuclear families and Scheduled tribe households to fill the gap to achieve Sustainable Development goals (SDG) target by 2030.